


alternate interior angles (the trigonometry remix)

by Termagant (subduction)



Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-17
Updated: 2008-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subduction/pseuds/Termagant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It is long years now — long since he and Hornblower have settled into their own comfortably perturbed orbits — yet still he finds himself thinking of odd things at odd times. In fact it happens more often now, not less. The details are lost, words and dates, and the memories are impressions only: of colour, of sound (Kennedy sang, nights in the wardroom; Hornblower, never), of scent. Of the habits of sunlight on blue-green sea, on brown-gold hair. Of the precise weight of navy blue serge in the tropics.</i>
</p><p>Remix of <a href="http://scriptorium.infotrope.net/fiction/kingston1.mhtml">A letter from Kingston, January 1802</a> for the <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/hh_remix">Hornblower Remix</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	alternate interior angles (the trigonometry remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Letter from Kingston, January 1802](https://archiveofourown.org/works/664898) by [MarnaNightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarnaNightingale/pseuds/MarnaNightingale). 



The third thing Bush noticed about Lieutenant Kennedy was the way his hands moved when he was excited, or angry, or worried. Often he would clasp them behind his back — later Bush would recognize this attempt at control, and guess where Kennedy had learned it — but still the fingers would tremble, the wrists flex in their mutual lock. In years to come it would be this feeling of restlessness he recollected first when he thought of Kennedy, or of the Caribbean at all.

The second thing was Kennedy's devotion to Hornblower. This much was plain, unashamed; it would have been difficult to miss.

First of all, Bush had noticed a certain quality about Kennedy's face — a set of the jaw, a fierceness in the eye — which had told him all he had needed to know to serve with Kennedy. It had said, clear as writ, that here was a man with something to fight for, and one who would go to his death striving.

*

"I could get a letter out," he had said. He had meant: _I am sorry_. He had meant: _I understand_.

*

There had been a moment, high on the cliffs above Samanà, when three young lieutenants drunk on sun and glory had seemed to settle into the shape of a perfect triangle: and in the instant when their feet had stepped together from earth into air Bush had felt a wild, improbable rush of something like gratitude.

The alignment was only passing, as a prow might break through a wave, and almost as soon as he had fancied it, it was gone again. Still, Bush did not forget the feeling, though he never discovered by what name it should be called. It is long years now — long since he and Hornblower have settled into their own comfortably perturbed orbits — yet still he finds himself thinking of odd things at odd times. In fact it happens more often now, not less. The details are lost, words and dates, and the memories are impressions only: of colour, of sound (Kennedy sang, nights in the wardroom; Hornblower, never), of scent. Of the habits of sunlight on blue-green sea, on brown-gold hair. Of the precise weight of navy blue serge in the tropics. When _Lydia_ had carried them back to those perfumed latitudes, so many years later, the first breaths of it were as a deluge.

If Bush were a thoughtful sort of man he might think it peculiar. Memory; its ferocious illogic. That the smell of Loire mud in spring should conjure the cries of gulls circling above Kingston. That the strain of muscles in Brown's back should recall — he cannot recall what their words were, that first time they saw with their own eyes what was meant by the word _plantation_, but he can hear the tones of their voices in perfect clarity. Memory, Kennedy might say, is insubordinate.

*

The details are difficult. Had he offered first? Had Kennedy not asked? Were the words spoken aloud, or only communicated?

"I could get a letter out," he had said.

Hadn't he?

*

Certain things are important to remember. The mechanics of sail — the gentle touches — are not so much a question of memory as nature. There must have been a time before he knew how to walk, but Bush does not remember this, either. He remembers Panama; he remembers a room in Kingston, the slanting quality of afternoon light. The death of his father. The precise shade of the sky over Portsmouth, the day he went to sea.

There had been good moments in _Renown_, too, before the cliff-top. Nights when Captain Sawyer had receded into himself instead of lashing out at his men. Nights of card-games, of calm seas, of stars overhead. Hornblower had been as far as Greek at school, and a decade later Bush can still trace the stars which make out the figure of Perseus, slayer of demons.

Only once had he had the feeling of witnessing something he ought not have — or, perhaps, only something he did not yet understand. He had come on deck early, before seven bells, to shake the restlessness from his legs. The middle watch was warm in the Caribbean, and quiet, in the sheltered waters between isles. Kennedy and Hornblower had been standing at the taffrail. Their bodies angled inward, and their hands rested carefully on the rail, a span apart. Hornblower was pointing, and as Bush had come closer it was not the story of Perseus he was telling, nor the lyre he traced in the stars.

"Two there, you see, close together." Kennedy's little finger twitched on the rail. He never could keep his hands still.

"And one — there — a little further away," Hornblower went on, softer still.

"Isosceles," Kennedy had said, and Bush had not been able to see his face, but from the tone he had guessed that Kennedy was smiling when he said it. The smile had still been mirrored — rarest of expressions — on Hornblower's face when they had turned, and had lingered, only a moment, after they had both seen Bush there and stood to attention like children caught at mischief.

Obligation, Bush knew. Duty, loyalty, sacrifice — these also. A lieutenant's pay did not go far, and all the shorter for being spread between six. None of this had ever explained Kennedy, or Kennedy and Hornblower. In the wardroom, on deck, ashore: in the shifting sands of the Caribbean his fellow lieutenants had seemed to form a peculiarly solid unit, some reliance unspoken but impossible to doubt. If Bush were a curious sort of man he might have wondered what bound them together, for it was plainly not the simple bond of long service, nor the profane one a first glance might suggest. Some event, some mutual tragedy perhaps — or, unlikelier, some mutual joy — seemed to constitute an absent third point; without it, the angle was impossible to judge.

He has known Hornblower more than ten years now, and still there are more questions unasked between them than all the questions they will ever ask put together. The questions he never asked Kennedy live in a separate room entirely.

Bush was never much for geometry, at any rate.

*

"I could get a letter out," he had said. "I could get a letter to London. If there's someone—"

"Yes," Kennedy had said, and Bush had not supposed for one moment that the letter would go to a sister.

*

If Bush were the impatient sort of man, or the jealous sort, he might wonder if he and Hornblower would ever be at peace, ever alone: always the ghosts of past and present seem to stand in their light, casting shadows. Here on the Loire they are three with cheerful, sturdy Brown, and Bush cannot resent him any more than he could Marie, or Lady Barbara, alone and far from home — or steadfast Maria, who mourns her husband even now. In certain lights, on certain nights — when crickets chirp, or the moon is in a certain phase — it is Kennedy, and also not Kennedy.

The details are lost, and when he closes his eyes in 1811 Bush does not recall the face of the man who accepted a letter from his hand in 1802, but he recalls the contours of the expression, the tightness in the way the man had asked for news of Hornblower: as though it cost him something very great to do so. (This is, he thinks, the question he should have asked Kennedy — had he not asked? Had he not known the name, once? — but he cannot recall it now, and to ask his captain after all these years is, as so many things are, quite out of the question.)

*

"I could get a letter out," he had said, and the next day, or the next — it hardly matters now — Kennedy's bed had been empty, and something in Hornblower's face, the same. If Bush were a man for regrets —

But he is not. Bush is a sailor, and the world, like the sea, is ever in motion: and the angles between things, like that of the sun to the horizon, do not remain constant for long.


End file.
